CCM came out of the Jesus Movement, a revival among American young people who wanted music in the idiom they already spoke. Larry Norman put the whole argument in a song title: "Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?". Andraé Crouch brought gospel into the same room. The recordings sound rough now. That was the point.

Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith moved the music from the margins to the centre, and labels like Sparrow Records built an industry around it. Grant's "Baby Baby" reached a general pop audience. That started an argument about whether crossing over was witness or compromise. Nobody has settled it since.

The genre split into as many styles as the mainstream had. DC Talk went from hip-hop to rock. Jars of Clay wrote for an alternative audience that would never have picked up a worship record.

Large churches began writing and publishing their own songs, and the congregational end took over. Chris Tomlin's "How Great Is Our God" and the Hillsong catalogue turned into shared repertoire across denominations and continents. Hymnals used to do that job.

Streaming changed distribution. Now a listener could find Christian music without ever walking into a Christian bookshop, and Lauren Daigle and TobyMac reached well past the church. Bethel Music built international reach off recorded worship.

Christian R&B and hip-hop moved to the front, with Lecrae and Maverick City Music among the names doing it. The songs also started addressing subjects the genre used to avoid: mental health, racial reconciliation, the things people were already dealing with on the way to church.